But there's no doubt that mental illness is a major subject of ye, to my ears its central focus, not only spoken through the lyrics but in the seductive sound collages that billow below them like an aural portrait of the subconscious. I'm conjecturing here about the private lives of the Kardashian Wests, and what intimate experiences lay behind this very short album that, in its ability to haunt, almost feels like too much. To be that person making great work that's always about to tip into incomprehensibility (take your meds) makes every year a shaky one. To look at your husband smiling, dancing, and wonder if he's put away his meds and is going to stay up for days now, signals a lack of control no amount of wealth or celebrity can ameliorate. The worst thing about bipolar is that, under its spell, the kind of rush that unaffected people actively seek - the zing of fun, the flash of insight, the surge of a healthy ego - becomes an entryway to chaos. Mania makes you a superhero the crash on its other side goes so low you scare yourself. Above the symbols, she added a picture of the sublime Wyoming mountains with a scrawl defacing it, and this: "Kanye shot the album cover on his iPhone on the way to the album listening party." The scrawl, which Kanye finger-painted on in the green of the phone's palette, reads: "I hate being Bi-Polar it's awesome." No wonder his wife chose symbols adding up to confusion, with an end note of distress, to share its origin with the world.Īnyone who is or has a loved one dealing with bipolar disorder knows the seed of radical disquietude the condition plants in anyone who encounters it. That's what Kim Kardashian tweeted after riding with her husband to the ranch called Diamond Cross, where he was about to reveal the work upon which their reputations and possibly, fortunes, would rest, at least for the next foreseeable future. Kanye shot the album cover on his iPhone on the way to the album listening party ??❤️????- Kim Kardashian West June 1, 2018Īnn Powers: Laughing/crying emoji. At his best, he's seemed to purposely play with them to reveal his and our humanity. The contradictions have always been rich with Kanye.
On the same album that Kanye says he's praying for Russell Simmons because he "got #MeToo'd," he rhymes sincerely about the challenge he knows he has in store raising daughters in a world full of hypermasculine, aggressive men because he's one, too. Jayson Greene of Pitchfork has this really great Kanye essay in which he talks about how gendered the word "genius" is because we reserve it only for men who symbolize this idea of "patriarchal conquest." He alludes to having bipolar disorder and calls it his "superpower," which is interesting to think about in this era where we're finally starting to examine problematic genius.
Even the extravagant listening event, in the middle of the least likely spot in America to release a hip-hop album, Jackson Hole, Wyo., felt like an attempt to bring 100+ music writers and taste makers and radio folks to the same isolated void he exists in on some level. Or transmit an SOS distress signal from deep within. We've been talking about Kanye living in this bubble, with the reality-star wife and the Calabasas address, and this album sounds like Kanye trying to bring us into his bubble. It's pronounced like the exclamation "yay," but maybe it's more of an unconscious cry for help. It's even stylized in all lower-case letters. At seven songs, ye is his briefest artistic statement, his shortest fuse. Kanye West made his eighth studio album his first self-titled LP - not counting the messiah-complex of a portmanteau he created with Yeezus.